Longtime 700 WLW-AM personality and nationally syndicated radio host Gary Burbank has died at the age of 84.
Long-time friend Bill Cunningham posted the news of the death of the popular radio host on Twitter Aug. 28. The nonprofit Burbank founded, Play It Forward, confirmed the news.
Burbank was known for characters he developed and used on the air, including Earl Pitts American, Gilbert Gnarley, the Right Rev. Deuteronomy Skaggs and blues musician Howlin’ Blind Muddy Slim.
Pitts’ commentaries have continued in national syndication.
Burbank retired from his job as radio host in December 2007.
Burbank came to WLW in 1981, and started as a morning host. He created numerous fictional characters, satirized the likes of Jerry Springer, Marge Schott and other local celebrities, and blasted the Reds and Bengals when they struggled.
The afternoon show he hosted on WLW included “Sports or Consequences,” a sports trivia quiz show in which callers asked Burbank and his supporting cast sports trivia questions, and were disconnected or “blown up” for various reasons. The caller won a prize by stumping the cast. With each correct answer from Burbank’s cast, he and his team exclaimed, “Heyyy! We don’t, we don’t, we don’t mess around. Hey!”
Cunningham said his long-time friend and former colleague was the most talented radio host of all time.
“There was no one else like him,” Cunningham said. “He stood alone. He did characters, he didn’t take calls. He had this comedic entertainment element. He was the master of radio comedy. You would see people alone in their cars laughing because he was hilarious.”
“He did things no one else did. And we’ll never see his like again.”
Burbank twice won the Billboard magazine and Marconi awards for large-market radio personality of the year. In 2012, Burbank was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame.
Burbank was born Billy Purser, in July 1941 in Memphis, Tennessee. He said he remembered listening to WLW while he was in the Army, stationed near Stuttgart, Germany, in the late 1950s.
He worked as “Bill Williams” and “Johnny Apollo” in Louisiana and Mississippi before becoming “Gary Burbank,” a name inspired by radio veteran and “Laugh-In” announcer Gary Owens, during his time at Louisville’s WAKY, where he created many of the characters he used on the air in Cincinnati.
Burbank also worked as a host and disc jockey in Tennessee and Windsor, Ontario.
Burbank opened several restaurants, including Burbank’s Real Bar-B-Q and Ribs in Sharonville, which closed in 2009.
Longtime Cincinnati TV sports anchor/reporter Greg Hoard, who died in March at age 73, published a biography about Burbank, “Voices in my Head: The Gary Burbank Story,” in 2009.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Gary Burbank, longtime 700 WLW-AM personality and radio host, dies at 84
Reporting by Dave Clark, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
